What do you do when you're writing a long-form story, and characters who have finished working through their personal issues and kinda have nothing left to do start piling up? ^^;
I can't really relate to this problem as a writer...I don't often split spotlight in my stories (even the ones with large casts), and when I do, usually ALL the main characters' arcs span the entire plot.
It is more difficult to write that way, since it means all the story beats have to be interconnected (characters don't get to just go off and have their * own * problems that affect no one else) but I feel like it makes more sense, so it's worth the extra effort.
I HAVE seen the issue a lot as a consumer, however. It makes me kind of sad, even, to see new, obviously superficial issues suddenly spring up for the more sidelined main characters just to 'give them something to do'...
And on the other side of the spectrum: characters just 'being there' and standing around because not only can the writers not think of anything for them to do, they can't even think of anything relevant for them to say...watching a former MC decay like that is just pitiful.
I feel like it all stems from a rather amateurish blind spot: connecting events to all the characters, and the failure thereof.
It's amateurish because any beginning writer should know how important it is, and yet it's such a widespread problem because it's really easy to train yourself out of when you're at the climax of a personal character arc, and so much energy is poured into this one person and their one problem.
It's hyper-focused, it's intense; for a few shining episodes/chapters the spotlight is reduced to one and all the mechanics of the story work to support that one.
And then...just like that, the problem is solved, and it's over. Everything returns to its original place, and suddenly...we have to consider all the characters again? There's more than one thing to think about again??
The best thing to do in that situation, I believe, is to take a HUGE step back from the story, or at least re-read the earlier parts to re-calibrate your brain.
But I think what a lot of writers do is give into the temptation to do it all again. They find the next individual to focus on and start building towards the next huge climax that will eclipse everything else...and this kinda works early on, when you have lots of shiny new things in your story that you've just barely explored.
But as time passes, and the audience gets used to the cast and the world, and you're still in the habit of jumping from eclipse to eclipse...while you do that, what's happening to all the stuff you've already revealed and the characters you've developed to maturity?
Nothing. You're not using them. You're ignoring them because you have to keep moving on to new issues in order to recapture that original high...and the longer the story continues, the more noticeable that becomes.
Writing can only do so much to cover up for a lack of history in a story...in a serious narrative, the things characters have done should follow them around in the form of consequences, traumas, experience, etc. Old characters should have new reactions to new events, and opportunities to use what they've learned from old events.
But 'eclipsing' deprives them of that, because the only thing that matters is 'the next big thing'. So they must either have a new problem whether they need it or not, or they must stand quietly in the background while a character who does have a problem soaks up all the screentime.
I think the simplest solution is to clean house: get rid of the characters whose primary arcs are over if you don't know what else to do. Have them walk off into the sunset, settle down with their s/o and hang up the cape, die, whatever. It's better than having them clutter up the story or hover around it like a ghost.
Usually, no one wants to do that because the characters in question are main characters...but in that case, why do they have 'nothing to do'? If they're so important to the story that it shouldn't progress without them, why are you struggling to include them, to the point where you might even regress/restart their character development just to keep them relevant? Something is fundamentally wrong there...
The tougher solution (and the one that should probably take place before the story is published...) is to go back over the story and break up at least some of those 'eclipses', so that more characters are contributing to the resolution of each issue.
Build community within your cast, ingrain the influences of the MC's into each other's lives. Best friends should share concerns, close family members should support each other; even enemies should notice and react to changes.
The whole point of a large cast is so you don't have just one protagonist going through the story alone...so make sure you write them as if they're not alone.
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Nov '20last reply
Nov '20- 5
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